I was reminded of this observation when I came across a passage
in George F. Kennan, the excellent Pulitzer Prize-winning
biography of the prominent foreign-policy
intellectual by John Lewis Gaddis. In 1950, notes Gaddis, no one
anticipated most of the major international developments that were
to take place in the next half-century, among them “that
there would be no World War” and that the United States and
the USSR, “soon to have tens of thousands of thermonuclear
weapons pointed at one another, would agree tacitly never to use
any of them.”

But the absence of further world war, whether nuclear or not,
was compatible with a fairly obvious observation: those running
world affairs after World War II were the same people or the
intellectual heirs of the people who had tried desperately to
prevent that cataclysm. It was entirely plausible that such people,
despite their huge differences on many issues, would manage to
avoid plunging into a self-destructive repeat performance.

Thus, it could have been reasonably argued at the time that
major war was simply not in the cards. Although this perspective
was not the only one possible, there was no definitive way to
dismiss it. Thus, as a matter of simple, plain, rational decision
making, this prospect—the one that proved to be
true—should have been on the table.

If no one anticipated this distinct possibility in
1950, the irreverent might be led ungraciously to suggest that the
United States would have been better served if those at the summit
of foreign policy had been replaced by coin-flipping chimpanzees
who would at least occasionally get it right out of sheer luck.
(The chimps would have to flip coins because the animals are all
too human and would likely otherwise fall into patterns of
repetitive, and probably agitated, behavior.)

We seem to be at it again. Just about the entire foreign-policy
establishment has taken it as a central article of faith that
nuclear proliferation is a dire security threat and that all
possible measures, including even war if necessary, must be taken
to keep Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons.

Concern is justified, but the experience of two-thirds of a
century suggests that if Iran does obtain the weapons, it will use
them in the same way others have: to stoke the national ego and to
deter real or imagined threats. For the mostpart, the few countries to which the weapons
have proliferated have found them a notable waste of time, money,
effort and scientific talent. They haven’t even found much
benefit in rattling them from time to time.

This was the case even when the weapons were taken on by large
countries with seemingly deranged leaders. Thus, when he got nukes,
the Soviet Union’s Stalin was plotting to “transform nature” by
planting lots of trees and China’s Mao had recently launched
a campaign to remake his society that created a famine
killing tens of millions. It was simplicity and spook on
steroids.

It is scarcely ever observed that nuclear proliferation has thus
far had consequences that are substantially benign. This suggests
that simplicity and spook continue to prevail up there at that
foreign-policy summit. Send in the chimps.